[Author] Intro

Our last scene saw the PCs go to the Long Roads Coffee House, meet up with Laria, and officially start their effort to rebuild the Silver Ravens. They met up with the tengu family currently occupying the place’s secret basement and agreed to help look for the missing Bellflower agent that would take them out of town.

In this scene, they’ll do exactly that. The intention is that this will be a sort of investigation montage that will end when they find the guy.

[GM] Mythic Bookkeeping

The last scene was pretty chill, but it did mostly consist of the PCs being exposited to, so let’s keep the Chaos Factor at 5.

The Tengu Sisters are our new entry on the Characters list. We progressed along The Path and Get Organized, but there have been no changes to the list.

Threads

  • The Path **
  • Find Shensen (Rosalia, Arcturus)
  • Contacting Ms. Docur (Jania)
  • Get Organized (Jade) *

Characters

  • The Dottari
  • The Chelish Citizens Group
  • The Red Jills
  • The Asmodeans
  • The Three-Legged Devil (location)
  • The Livery Grimples
  • The Tengu Sisters

I roll an 8 on the d10 here, so we have no surprises and the scene will indeed be an investigation montage.

[GM] Prepping the Scene

Dungeon Fantasy doesn’t really have rules for extended investigative scenes, as all your generic delver wants is to find vague rumors about their next dungeon. So let’s borrow some from GURPS Action and/or Monster Hunters instead.

Our “final answer” is this: Nan Comerivos was captured by dottari and imprisoned in the Salix Salt Works.

The PCs start out knowing the following, from conversations held in the previous scenes, and rumors heard all the way at the beginning.

  • Comerivos brought in a shipment of Varisian cloth along with the tengus.

  • He took a sample and left to try and find a buyer, so he could use the money to leave the city with said tengus.

  • He disappeared.

  • Political prisoners deemed to be “low profile” or “low threat” are being taken to the Salix Salt Works to perform forced labor, rather than being locked up in Kintargo Keep. This is a rumor from scene 1. It’s not relevant yet but the PCs will remember it when the right time comes.

If we follow the rules, I think it would take a Current Affairs roll to deduce Nan’s current location, at an initial penalty of -6. A success right away would mean a Holmes-like deductive leap, perhaps based on information the PC happened to overhear… but Rosalia doesn’t trust her chances with a base skill level of 14, so let’s investigate until we reduce that penalty.

[Player] Finding the Guy

Jania suggests they follow in Nan’s footsteps in the most literal way, by grabbing another bolt of cloth herself and trying to find a buyer for the shipment. In the process, they will keep an ear out for rumors about the situation of Kintargo’s black market and about what might have happened to Nan specifically.

[GM] Of course the "player" would send me right back to look up rules
with the very first thing he says.

Jania and Rosalia make a series of discreet inquiries about where to sell this shipment of very high quality cloth that hasn’t exactly gone through customs. They learn that the best place to find a buyer would be Redroof Market, since that’s where all the cloth merchants and tailors are.

[GM] That's a Streetwise roll. Jania leads the effort with her skill level
of 14, and Rosalia makes complementary rolls to help with her 13.

Rosalia succeeds at her roll, giving Jania a +1 to hers.

However, the same shady stranger at a bar that tells them this information also cautions that the dottari have been cracking down on contraband at that particular market. No, they can’t really track the provenance of every scrap of cloth that changes hands there, but these are Thrune’s goons. All they need to do is declare someone looks suspicious and take them away. Happened to this kinda nondescript half-elf dude just the other day. He was carrying around a bolt of cloth very similar to that one you have on you.

[GM] It takes another Streewwise roll to discover information about their
actual goal. Rosalia once again succeeds in her complimentary roll and Jania
rolls a critical success thanks to her help!

This gives us a total of +3 towards our final deduction roll.

So Nan was caught by the dottari, huh? Now is the time for our heroes to remember that session 1 rumor: low-profile and low-threat prisoners are being taken to the Salix Salt Works to perform hard labor. Nan seems like it would fit the profile, but is he really there?

Well, turns out verifying this hypothesis is quite easy. Jania knows the Seeker spell, she knows Nan’s name, and many of his personal effects are still back at the coffee house’s basement. She sends a Silver Raven Figurine message to Laria asking for one of his spare hats and setting up a meeting at Redroof Market.

They receive the message and Jade decides she will go. While she’s making the trip, which should take about 20 minutes, the pair decides to try to sell that looted jewelry here at the market.

[GM] Rosalia takes the lead, with Jania helping, both using their
Merchant-13. Jania succeeds, and Rosalia wins with her effective skill of 14
against the "generic 15" described in the rules.

This means they'll get 60% of the goods' real value, which they already
know. That means the two signet rings and the embroidered scarf will be sold
for $2640. 6 golds, 12 silvers.

I decide to add a little more color here.

They end up selling the two signet rings and an embroidered scarf to a tiefling tailor named Hetamon Haace, who has a big shop in the area and shows an interest in the scarf.

Rosalia: “We’ve fallen on hard times, don’t you know, and so we need to sell some of Grandma’s jewels to make ends meet. A very tragic story.”

Haace: “These two signet rings have different seals. Are you sure they belong to your grandma?”

Jania: “Well, they belong to somebody’s grandma.”

Haace buys the stuff even though he obviously knows it’s not 100% on the up and up. Jania and Rosalia split the money amongst themselves for added security. Rosalia then goes around the market selling the bag of pearls piecemeal to various merchants.

[GM] We use the same rolls here, so $7200 for the lot. 18 gold for
simplicity, again split between the two.

Once Jade meets them, they set off to an area just outside the Salt Gate. It’s close enough to the Salt Works that it’s unlikely to fail if Nan is there, and will be fairly unambiguous. Sure enough, the spell points Jania towards the Salt Works, and not to the Holding House or to Kintargo Castle, the other two primary holding areas of the city. Case solved!

[GM] Way to shortcut the investigation process! Then again, that's exactly
why I made sure Jania had Seeker.

Now that they know where their target is, it’s time to plan a raid. That ends our scene.